Health Care Costs are Biggest Future Problem: Reich

The budget problems that come from federal spending and entitlements, such as Social Security, pale in comparison with the challenges of containing health care costsand maintaining Medicare at the level of treatment Americans expect, Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary, told CNBC Thursday.

“The main problem is Medicare and the problem inside Medicare is that the Baby Boomers are going be demanding a lot of health care and we have no real control over health care costs yet,” said Reich.

The former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton adminstration now teaches public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He is also a CNBC contributor.

Reich and Jim Nussle, a director of the Office of Management and Budget under George W. Bush, debated how to reign-in government costs. (Watch video of Reich and Nussle's discussion here.)